Weather Cooperates With Festival

Crafts, Crabs, Clams And Trucks Dominate Mathews Market Days

MATHEWS — At long last Mathews will have an answer to a question that has baffled its automotive experts: Who has the ugliest pickup truck in the county?

Prizes for "ugliest truck" and five other categories will be awarded as part of the Tournament of Trucks, which will parade down Main Street at 1:30 today.

The parade is just one of many highlights of the 15th Mathews Market Days, which started Thursday and completes its annual run tonight. Festival goers, organizers and vendors spent the last two days basking in delightful weather and were expecting another strong crowd today.

"The weather has been much more cooperative than usual," said Sherry Inabinet. "Last year we had rain and the year before we had heat, so this has been rather nice." Inabinet and her daughter, Ginger, run a booth offering 85 varieties of cakes and fruit breads. They baked 1,369 different loaves, with names like banana brown sugar pecan, cranberry sour cream nut, and lemon banana coconut.

The annual event turns the normally sedate court green into a bustling bazaar, where one can buy anything from a hand-made hammock to seashell-encrusted picture frames and other curios and trinkets, and of course clam fritters.

The clam fritters are faithfully provided each year by the members of the East River Hunt Club, a group of about 32 local hunting enthusiasts.

"We'd give you the recipe, but it's been in the family so long," said Walter Stillman, who was presiding over the fritter operation clad in denim overalls decorated with brightly colored cartoon chickens.

"He wears that hunting," confided another club member.

Today's festivities will be kicking off at 10 a.m. with the introduction of the honor ary mayor, Martin Diggs. Gov. Gerald L. Baliles is expected to drop in this morning and make an appearance with Michael T. Soberick, Democratic candidate for the House of Delegates.

Those interested in seeing craftspeople at work should step up to the second floor of the firehouse, where they can see Bob Edberg carving water fowl or watch Pamela Franck weaving on a portable loom among others.

Carlton P. Brooks III, a member of the Market Days Committee who "is in charge of special events and all the weird stuff like the crab race," said that one of the more amusing events today should be the watermelon seed spitting contest at 2:30.

The crab race will be held at 6:30; participants can bring their own crab or use one that will be provided.

Lots of entertainment will be offered in the courthouse, and the Mathews Art Group's exhibit and sale is on Main Street a short walk from the court green.

The day and the festival will be capped off with a street dance from 8 to 11 p.m. at which '50s music will be provided by Joey and the Jammers.

Parking for Market Days will be available at Mathews High School and Mathews Intermediate School. A shuttle bus will be making regular runs between those locations and the court green.